Monday, December 19, 2011

ITP Showcase

Digidrench:

Digidrench was one of the first displays upon entering the exhibit. It consisted of a tv screen, the image split into thirds, each third containing a person onscreen. In front of the screen, there was a setup of three pitchers and containers, each holding a different colored liquid. When the liquid was poured from pitcher to container, which held a water-level sensor of sorts, the onscreen person was drenched in something similar to what was being poured from the pitcher, with the video being played in accordance to the water level. As the container was drained however, the video of the onscreen persona would play in reverse, effectively resulting in a dry person. I found this display to be rather interesting because it seemed like a playfully simple concept overall, om top of which it incorporated an element of interactivity between the physical and the digital.

Tweet Laser-Scribe (what I call it):

There was the display that consisted of a mechanism which used a laser pointer to write out certain tweets that it would pull from the twitter API, containing the word "fade", on a phosphorescent board. What resonated most about this was the fact that each letter that the mechanism wrote had to be manually programmed in. -I'm assuming it was something along the lines of letter by letter telling which gear/motor/what have you, to turn just the right amount to form the letter. For some reason I found the idea behind that to be somewhat intimate, for lack of a better term. -It was something that showed a certain level of personal involvement that I especially appreciated. I don't however mean to say that the other projects didn't show personal involvement, because surly they were all hand-built for the most part, I guess just the fact that the output seemed to have somewhat human qualities struck a chord.

Eyeware:

Lastly there is eyeware, something that I right away recognized as none other than the eye-writer that had been demoed in class. It turned out that this was actually a modification to that existing code. This display consisted of the wearer/creator wearing a pair of glasses with a camera facing her eye, and facing out. A monitor that she'd been wearing on her front side displayed her eye, and its position, as well as what the second camera was looking at. This second output would pan relative to where the eye was shown to be looking. Ultimately, to me, this created the illusion of seeing through someone else's eyes, or at least, as portrayed on a screen. This resonated with me simply because of the fact that it offered this perspective of someone else, or proposed the idea. Because really, you can never really in a literal sense, see things through anyone's eyes but your own, which silly as it seems, had honestly been a thought that's bothered me since I've been about four or five years old, thinking about life's big problem's already. Thank you, eyeware, for letting me sleep just that little bit better at night!.